At the Guelph Station the conception was that the carbon dioxide
might dissolve the lime of the shell for the chick to use in "makin'
hisself." As an egg could not be analyzed fresh and then hatched, a
number were analyzed from the same hens and others from those hens
were then incubated with the various amounts of carbon dioxide,
buttermilk, Zenoleum, and other factors. The lime content of the
contents of the fresh egg averaged about .04 grams. At hatching time
the lime in the chick's body averaged about .20 grams and was always
several times as great as the maximum of the eggs.
Clearly calcium phosphate of the chick's bones is made by the
digestion of the calcium carbonate from the shell and its
combination with the phosphorus of the yolk. Certainly a remarkable
and hitherto unexplained fact. The amount of lime required is not
great enough, however, to materially weaken the shell, but, of
course, the process is vital to the chick as bones are quite
essential to his welfare, but it is an "inside affair" of which the
three-tenths of one per cent of carbon dioxide incidentally present
under the hen is entirely irrelevant.
A further observation made by the investigator is that the chicks
which obtained the lowest amount of lime were abnormally weak. As
long as we are powerless to aid the chick in digesting lime this
fact, like the other, belongs in the field of pure, rather than
applied science. I think that we are safe in saying that the
weakness caused the shortage of lime rather than vice versa; if the
writer remembers runts in other animals are usually a little short
of bone material.
The chemist of the station is to be given special credit for not
jumping at conclusions. In the summary of this work he states:
"There is apparently no connection between the amount of lime
absorbed by the chick and the amount of carbon dioxide present
during incubation."
The Box Type of Incubator In Actual Use.
Although the fact is not so advertised and frequently not recognized
even by the makers, the success of existing incubators is directly
proportional to the extent with which they control evaporation. In
order to show this I have only to call attention briefly to two or
three of the most successful types of incubators on the market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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